Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

JOSEPH (of the Old Testament)

We have all thoughtfully -- or unthoughtfully -- read the pathetic story of
the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that
opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of the poor, and
human liberty -- a corner whereby he took a nation's money all away, to the
last penny; took a nation's live-stock all away, to the last hoof; took a nation's
land away, to the last acre; then took the nation itself, buying it for bread,
man by man, woman by woman, child by child, till all were slaves; a corner which
took everything, left nothing; a corner so stupendous that, by comparison with
it, the most gigantic corners in subsequent history are but baby things, for
it dealt in hundreds of millions of bushels, and its profits were reckonable
by hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was a disaster so crushing that its
effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt to-day, more than three thousand
years after the event.
- "Concerning the Jews"

For ages Joseph has been a most delicate and difficult problem. That is, for
everybody but me. It is because I examine him on the facts as they stand recorded,
the other theologians don't. Overborne by a sense of duty, they paint the facts.
They paint some of them clear out. Paint them out, and paint some better ones
in, which they get out of their own imaginations. They make up a Joseph-statement
on the plan of the statement which a shaky bank gets up for the beguilement
of the bank-inspector. They spirt away light-throwing liabilities, and insert
fanciful assets in their places.
- letter to Edward M. Foote, 14 March 1906. Reprinted in Autobiography of
Mark Twain, Volume 1 (University of California Press, 2010)

I do not find that Joseph made loans to those distressed peasants and secured
the loans by mortgage on their lands and animals, I seem to find that he took
the land itself -- to the last acre, and the animals too, to the last hoof.
And I do not get the impression that Joseph charged those starving unfortunates
"only a fair market price for the food they received." No, I get the
impression that he skinned them of every last penny they had; of every last
acre they had; of every last animal they had; then bought the whole nations
bodies and liberties on a "fair market" valuation for bread and the
chains of slavery. Is it conceivable that there can be a "fair market price,"
or any price whatever, estimable in gold, or diamonds, or bank notes, or government
bonds, for a mans supremest possession -- that one possession without
which his life is totally worthless -- his liberty?
- letter to Edward M. Foote, 14 March 1906. Reprinted in Autobiography of
Mark Twain, Volume 1 (University of California Press, 2010)